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Well, two weeks in, I still can’t say enough about it and I still keep finding new features.  Is it as good as an iPhone?  I don’t know, I don’t care.  Does it make calls, keep my schedules in sync, organize all my emails, appointments and tasks?  Yes.

Is it easy to type on? Yes.

Are all the cool apps that the iPhone have on it?  Well, it depends on your definition of “cool,” I guess, but yes.  The Weather Channel app is exactly the same.  Many things the iPhone needs an “app” for are built-in functions, from what I’ve read.

Everyone has different needs.  This device exceeds all mine and I still find cool and new uses for it. Read more

Engadget is reporting a phone conference scheduled between Lowell McAdam and Eric Schmidt , respective CEOs of Verizon and Google. While no facts have been confirmed, the rumors abound that an Android-based phone will be discussed.

Frankly, Verizon is long overdue for the “next cool gadget phone.”  AT&T has had the iPhone locked up and all the other Android phones have all been T-Mobile. With all the brouhaha over Chrome OS and the rumors that it would be mobile-device bound, that would be a pleasant surprise.  AndroidAndMe.com is already reporting a Verizon-bound Android 2.0 phone, the Motorola Tao, will be launched on December 1.

We’ll (hopefully) know more this afternoon.

CNET News is reporting Google services outages World-Wide .

Granted, this is not a normal occurrence, and (you would think) this would most certainly not become a regular issue.  However, I think the quote from Twitter user @Tadiera says it all:

“The Internet dies with out Google. Can’t get to my bank Web site because it’s waiting on ‘google-analytics.com.’ This is made of lame,” said Twitter user Tadiera.

I repeat what I wrote earlier this week: If you’re a large company, you do not want to rely on Google Analytics.  At this point, the little guy is now suffering.

From @Google on twitter:

We’re aware some users are having trouble accessing some Google services. We’re looking into it, and we’ll update everyone soon.

C’est la vie.

Updated: 3:30 PM

Oops, we’re sorry, air traffic control rerouted our flight.  That’s the answer from Google about their outage.

One of the cool things about Google is their laid-back attitudes.  It’s what makes them, Google. It’s also what makes them successful and desireable to work for. But 14% of Google’s user base is a lot of affected users.  On the search or mail front, that’s annoying and inconvenient.  On the analytics side, it’s lost data that can never come back.  In some cases, it’s your site’s pages that were never served which is potentially loss of business and certainly inconvenience for your customers and potential-customers.

Google’s non-technical answer is appropriate. However, the short reponse without reassuring their customers it won’t happen again is as tasteless as an airline meal.

The world loves Google, right?  How can you complain with free Web search, free email, free blogs, free picture sharing, free video sharing and all the disk space in the world with which to do it?  So when Google released Google Analytics, we all said, “why not?” Read more

Not even letting the fury of ire from their bandwidth cap plans cool, Time Warner hit back announcing that the planned DOCSIS 3.0 upgrade to the much faster 50Mbps broadband service will not happen in the four markets that voiced their disapproval of the bandwidth caps.

While no official press release from the company seems to exist either way on the subject, Time Warner’s VP of Public Relations, Alex Dudley seemed to tell one blog reported exactly why there’s no DOCSIS upgrade in sight for Texas, North Carolina and Rochester, NY:

The image at right depects a Twitter search result from the conversation between Stacey Higginbotham from Gigaom and Time Warner’s PR Rep, Alex Dudley. Read more

Time Warner really needs to get their collective heads on straight for their future.  The defense of  “those who use more should pay more” is fine until they pair it with the lie that their costs go up when their customers use more.

Using publicly accessible financial statements filed with the SEC and readily available on Google Finance, Time Warner’s total revenue has nearly doubled from $8.8 Billion at end-of-year 2005 to a whopping $17.2 Billion at end-of-year 2008.  Gross profit has mirrored those numbers, growing from $4.9 Billion in 2005 to over $9 Billion in 2008. The percentage  increases are as close as you’ll see to a 1:1 revenue-to-profit ratio. Read more

Kudos to Google for going too far this April Fool’s day a job well-accomplished this year!

Google didn’t disappoint, keeping with the tradition of their April Fool’s pranks.  This year, they carried a unified message with Google’s CADIE, and it would appear that every department got involved in this effort. Read more

Obama Everywhere. That’s what his Web site shows in the bottom-right corner. He’s on Facebook, MySpace and Linked In. He’s got channels and profiles on You Tube, Flickr, Twitter and Eventful. There’s even a my.barackobama.com for you to do your own part to help his campaign and have a free site to coordinate it all.

Now, the candidate who took the Internet by storm is looking for a Search Engine Marketing expert. He – or his campaign – apparently knows there’s more to SEM than stuffing HTML code on a page. Read more

My definitive answer: Hell, yes.

OK, for the squeamish, truly, it’s nothing. I’ve never has any surgical procedure outside of having my wisdom teeth pulled. When I laid down on that table and saw nothing but surgical masks, gloves and those bright, silver surgical lights, I really started to wonder what I was getting myself into.

But then, the next few events happened in a span of less than 6 minutes:

• my eye was taped open (weird, but not scary)
• I was pelted with lots of eye drops
• there was a fan sound and some air
• a lot of blurry lights and happenings above my head
• a few loud buzzes

After all that, I was happy to find the lights and the faces looking down on me back in better focus and the doctor said “you did great.” Read more

I confess myself disappointed. I finally break my 2+ years of not pulling a practical joke on April Fool’s Day and the Internet on the whole turns up a mediocre performance.

First, Googler and practical funnyman extraordinaire Matt Cutts decided he was “skipping April Fools this year.” What?! OK, well so it turned out that his post, itself, was actually the joke. But really Matt, we expect more from you than a faux Firefox tattoo. Although I did like the iPhone feature gag.

As for Google, Virgle was neat and had a bunch of people talking. But the Google Custom Time was truly clever. How many people actually fell for that one? Read more

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